2017-12-30

Notes on Mental Security

Note: these are some rough, preliminary notes on mental
security, defined as the art and discipline of keeping one's
mental software free from hostile external influence. Or in other
words, having a mind able to achieve its own goals, rather than
goals of, say, Moloch
or other people which happened to be around. This is supposed to
serve as a reference point for discussion and further thought.
It's definitely not an explanation or a tutorial.

Why?

this is dangerous business, and not one that human
minds are designed for

however, necessary to do anything which is far outside
of the Overton window of agency

if you are doing such a thing, you might just as
well ignore the risk, because if you fail at security
your cause is doomed anyway

of course, security is pointless unless you are
convinced that you actually have some
integrity/values/thoughts that are worth protecting

and it should go without saying that working on
security with insufficient self-knowledge is just shooting
yourself in the foot really hard